Oriental Bittersweet

Oriental Bittersweet

her arms full of swans

never meant, no really never

meant you any harm.

Oriental Bittersweet

cuts her body with a blade

and never sees, no never really

sees the mess she's made.

Oriental Bittersweet

has horse blanket hair--

blacktop eyes and blackstrap tongue

and promises she cares.

Oriental Bittersweet

knows EMT's by name--

she'll take you with her, with her taken

here she comes again.

______

Giselle

 

In Paris, at that time

we knew of Giselle, the world's most

talented and also hideous torch singer.

Muddy complected,

with white eyes like egg shells,

and skin chock-a-block with blue veins,

the woman was hard on the vision, sweet to the ears.

Have you ever heard

a buzzard that could break your heart?

Giselle could wring your soul with Gloomy Sunday,

make you miss someone

you never met with Lover Man

(Oh Where Can You Be?) She was serious!

Willow Weep For Me used to make 'em bawl like babies.

So one night this strange cat

showed up and started bringing her

trifles -- sugar candies, baubles, pretty shells and whatnot.

Oh, she sang, Just in time,

you found me just in time and she smiled

like a split shoe and ran her broken branch fingers through his hair.

We wondered, is he crazy? Blind? What?

Well, he weren't blind.

Cat could read a menu from five miles off

and he was no bug either, he was some kind of poet.

What we found out, after a long time,

was that this cat was stone deaf from bombs in the war.

He just loved Giselle like a bird loves the sky at dawn when it's

Beginning To See The Light. 

_________

for Word Garden Word List--My Dear I Wanted To Tell You. 

Music: Della Reese I'm Beginning To See the Light

Lady Poet

 

Who changed you, water lily, who betrayed

and left your leaves to sway half-drownëd here?

Your moon-dazed face is pale, night-sick, afraid.

Water lily so wounded, so austere.

You of many stems but a single face--

no voice at all except poems water-writ.

Who muddied the stars of your secret place,

and forced such a sorrowful alphabet?

________

A rispetto poem for What's Going On?--"The Dark" 

Music: the late Marianne Faithful Sad Lisa

Lantern On A Wooden Walk

 

The lantern's body in autumn is cold

because its coat is a gift from the wind.

The lantern lies close to the wooden wet

in order to hear where the tree has been.

The lantern's handle is ever unheld

so that silence can take it further than words.

Left on the path, left ever low,

left to consider the motion of birds.

The lantern's glass is lit by flame--

its mother the match that gave and went out.

A lantern on a wooden walk--

pass by, pilgrim, with or without.

________

for Dverse Poetry "light"

Music: The Bee Gees Lamplight

PlasticHead

PlasticHead, Our Weeping Lady of Sorrows,

does not see herself in mirrors.

Like a tortoise, drug addict, or victim of a head injury,

her protective helmet lets in nonsense, 

but does not eliminate it.

PlasticHead therefore believes herself a kind of shithead,

her mind a terrarium made of one-way glass.

Her parents hand her texts substantiating this,

wrongheaded maxims, ill-timed remarks and iffy teachings.

Playmates bash her plastic head on the sidewalk.

Enter alcohol, religion, relationships.

Tossed up on the shore of adulthood, 

PlasticHead looks back and sees the smoking pile-up of her various endeavors.

It's all been a lie. 

PlasticHead, manufactured plaything of Heaven,

find angels in the pockets of your apron.

The molded face that took the place of your true visage

was nothing but assigned artifice, fiction, dressage.

PlasticHead reacts with cold anger, freezing herself solid,

thus further and finally shattering the hated doll head.

Her mosquito-pond blood reddens and warms,

evaporating her tears into a silver fog--she breathes herself in,

embraces the Divine like a gator wrestler, 

sleeps well for once,  lives another ten minutes victoriously,

then expires.

PlasticHead, inspirational story to finish the broadcast,

you have no weepy present, no golden future, no awful past.

Be absorbed into the One Mind, The Magnificent Place,

regard in a Mirror of Stars, your true, your perfect, absolutely front-page Face.

_________________

For The Sunday Muse #170, where I am hosting the masked ball.

Confession

There is a man in the foam of a wave
and he watches for spirits
who can never be saved
I leave him a loaf on the edge of my skin
though he knows by the Moon
he can never come in.

The reeds are rotten with whispering wrecks
that cradle the sailors
who've broken their necks
in lonely dawn when the candle is gone
they sing to me softly
their odd borrowed song

To search for the man in the foam of a wave
who constantly calls me
by another love's name
and in his pocket he carries a spoon
to measure my sorrow
by the phase of the Moon.

Come Winter, come Summer, come judgement, come Fall,
come whispering spirits,
come nothing at all,
I'll take off my clothes and my garland of snow
and call him to come
where he already goes.
____

Two Mugs / A Dollar Each

There were/ two pretty mugs for a dollar each.
I had a truck full of mail/ outside,
a sick dog/ at home
a full day/ ahead
and a heart weighted/ by a gf's silence.

I bought them/ both
and they became/ favorites.
Every morning for years/ one chosen
and filled/ first thing.

One broke last winter/ doing dishes
and the other, in carelessness/ this morning.
My time is / my own,
my new dog is/ healthy and strong,
and "choose me or lose me"/ is good advice. 

There was a continuous line/ of so many days
leading back/ to two pretty mugs, a dollar each.
A me who I used to be/ bought them both that day--
but I can't bring them back/ or now remember
who that woman was. 
_______

129 words for "mono no aware" at Real Toads.

 

A Pyromaniacial Glossary

You likely think living in a burning building is a temporary thing. 
No. It's a lifestyle unchosen--a birthright.
Nothing gets old here, that's true--
everyone wears the latest oily rags.

Kiss me, taste my turpentine lip gloss.
True love for ten minutes, 
then a hundred alarms,
a million exits.

Containment? Oh fuck, you're funny.
_______

for Friday 55.

 

Singer & Song

vintage Russian post card

No matter the storm
and the lightning bones that dance across the night--
no matter the bear
who wakes hungry from a winter of dreaming you--

No matter the snowdrop and crocus
who lie and tell you to leave your clothes by the frozen pond--
no matter the evergreen
claiming to be constant from behind its newly fledged fingers--

I will sing, 
as the blackbirds do,
for you, no matter how hopelessly, how strangely--
I will sing for you.

No matter the goat with its bell
who eats the shoots of grass before the sun can set on them--
no matter the shepherd's dog
who has run away and left the flock to whatever may pass--

No matter angels or devils
who quarrel and pose never-endingly under their different banners--
no matter creatures who hide 
and wait, only to have remained too long as you passed by--

I will sing,
as the blackbirds do,
for you, no matter how hopelessly, how strangely--
I will sing,

Sing for you.
______